In recent years, demand for a rear projection is becoming increasingly strong as a suitable display for a monitor for a home theater, a large screen television, or the like. In a transmission screen used for the rear projection, a lenticular lens substrate is in general use. However, such a conventional rear projection provided with a lenticular lens substrate has a problem that the vertical angle of view thereof is small although the lateral angle of view thereof is large (namely, there is a bias in the angles of view).
As a solution to such a problem, there has been proposed a transmission screen which uses a microlens array sheet (microlens substrate) on which a plurality of microlenses each having a concave or convex structure that is optically rotationally symmetric are formed in place of the lenticular lens substrate (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-131506). However, although such a microlens array sheet has a feature that distribution of vertical and lateral view angles is sufficiently large, it is difficult to obtain sufficient view angle characteristics because a difference of luminous intensity becomes larger in accordance with an angle of view (that is, a view angle).